Friday 7 February 2020

Dress Rehearsal, I'm looking for clues

Awhile back my good friend Mr Vagabond owner of the ryval Penny Farthing  studios asked "How does a studio go about making a good detective movie ?"
Now he's just released his first one which can been seen here http://vagabondswargamingblog.blogspot.com/2020/01/a-detective-game-retrieving-grimoire-of.htm.

I hope after watching the movie (Good wasn't it ?) you've returned, I'll assume you have & carry on as good detective movie is something that N&D have also been striving to produce if a some what different kind, now we've released a couple in the pasted with Chip Spud & Tasha Stripvo & while happy with them they haven't quite been as I'd have liked, so were doing some dress rehearsals trying some new things.
Now after a lot of investment in time & money we've some new ideas in the pipeline to try & make things better, now the script team come up with all sort of wonderful idea's (reads different rule sets) & then it's up to our chief script writer Doug Mitten to pick what he things will work best.

 As it happens we're trying out some of the ideas right now, in a case involving Chip & Tasha, Chip has got a phone call from a wealthy lady who's husband has gone missing while carrying out what she calls his indiscretions & has gone out to her house to get more details.

Designer note, I'm trying out a few new things which when needed will be explained in captions below the pictures.

While at the house Chip learns from the chauffeur that he dropped the Master off at Queen Square las night.
Chip is talking to the Chauffeur, normally when interaction with someone to get information it would require a question test, but at this is the start of the case & we need to give Chip a lead as to where to start no test is required.
As he's talking to the Lady of the house he notices the remains of a piece of paper in the dying amber's of the fire, could this be a clue ?
To try to get this clue Chip takes a Brains test set against a difficulty rating, how this works is to set the difficultly I roll 2d6 & pick the lowest, if you wanted to try make the test harder you could pick the highest or you could just per set the test if you wanted,  then roll 3d10 for the person using their brains stat, each dice score which together with the brains stat that is 10 or more is a success, then roll 3d10  for the difficulty with any roll  when added to the difficulty rating that is 10 or more been a success, to solve the clue you have to get more brains successes then difficulties successes.
 Reaching in he plucks out the paper' on it he can make out some of the letters  from two words, igh
& Ros.

Given that Queen Square is a well known red light area & the missing person has a liken for what his wife calls indiscretions plus what was on the paper Chip deducts that the missing person went to meet someone last night in the area possible called Rose, his next call will be Queen Square but its to early to go there, so he'll return to his office & make a few phone calls.

Chip arrives at Queen square & as he thought the girls are about.
He heads over to the closest & shows her a picture of the missing man, but gets nothing more from her then a look at her credentials.
Here Chip takes a brains test trying to get information from the women, Chip is a grade 3 character & rolls 3d10 for the test, his brains is 5 so he will be looking for 5+ on each roll, the woman is grade 1 NCP so will roll 1 d10 , her brains is 2 so she'll need 8+, if Chip win the test by 2 or more she'll give him some information, so Chip would need to roll at least 2 5+ & hope the woman doesn't roll a 8+, if she did then Chip would  need all of his dice to be 5+ , if he wins by 1 or if it a draw nothings happens,  if the woman should win she'll attack him, in this test Chip won by 1.
He bids her goodnight & moves toward the next girl,
In this case the man is a PEF, how this works is at the start of the scene there will be given the day time & the location a set number of PEF's  that might or might not come into play, the area is divided into 9 equal parts & as Chip move from one part to another I roll a d8, if the d8 score is less then the area number then a PEF will come into play.
but before he reaches her a man approaches him from across the street.
Man " Chip Spud ? Chip nods as the man continues " Tony the book sent me, he's noticed your account is heavily in the red & wants to know when your going to paid up ?"
Right a PEF has turned up now what ? to decide what it is I role 3d10 using Chips grade 3 as the the base number, if Chip rolls 2 or more 7'+ its an enemy if not its a NCP who Chip may or may not interact with, in this case the men turned out to be a NCP, so the next time a PEF turns up I'll add 1 to Chip's base score  and will keep doing so until a PEF turns out to be an enemy.
Chip "Things have been a bit quite lately but I've got a case now so tell him I should be able to fix up in the next few days"
Man "Ok I'll tell him that but don't have me to come looking for your again" & with that he turns & walks away.
Chip shrugs his shoulders & walks on. 
The next girl has nothing to offer, apart from something he neither wants or can afford, so he carries on down the other side of the square, as he reaches the parked car two man get out, one has a knife the other a baseball bat.
Here the PEF turns out to be an enemy so a brains test is taken by all characters to see in what order they will act., for this test they all roll 1d10 & add the score to  their brains stat, with the highest score going first followed by the next highest, with any draws been rolled off.
Man with the knife" We'd like a word with you"
Not liking the look of the men or their manner, Chip lashes out with the lead-sock he carries in his pocket for such occasions & drops the man with the knife.
Chip wins the roll off so goes first & hits the guy on the left knocking him to the ground, this means his mate will have to take a guts test.
Seen his mate go down like a ton of bricks, the tug with the club decides he wants no part of this & takes to his heels.
Having failed his guts test the tug move 2d6 away from Chip & will keep doing so until he either passes the test or leaves the table.
As Chips watches him tear off down the street he hears a groan from the guy laying on the pavement, he reaches down, grabs him up & slams him against the car.
Chip" Who sent you & what does he want ?"
Man "Nobody sent us we ju...
Chip" Don't give me that, now talk unless you want more of the sock"
Man "Ok Diamond John sent us, he said we were to have a word to stop you asking questions"
Chip giving the guy a couple of slaps across the face,"Why"
Man "I don't know, he just said to stop you he didn't say why"
With the other guy gone Chip is free to try to interrogate the man, had his mate stuck around & hit Chip he would have been able to join in the fight this turn, the interrogation test works like the question test except that its brains stat against willpower  stat.
Chip" Right, well tell him he to send a better messenger next time, now scram  before I lose my temper"
As the guy jumps into the car & takes off Chip walks down to the next girl & taking out the picture asks " Did you having to see this guy around here last night ?"
Girl looking at the picture "Maybe"
Handing her a five note Chip " Do you want to tell me who he was maybe with ?"
Girl" He was with Jessie"
Chip" Is Jessie around tonight ?
Girl" I an't seen her' but she's a good friend of Molly's who over by the statue, maybe she can tell you where she is"
This time Chip wins the question test by 2 so gets some information from the woman.
                                                                                                                                                                    Chip thanks her for the help & goes over to Molly. taking out another five he asks " Any idea  were Jessie might be tonight ?" Molly I'll be your Jessie if you want"
Chip" Thanks but that not what I'm looking for" & handing her the five " I just want to ask her some questions"
Molly" You the law ?"
Chip "If I was would I have giving you the five ?"
Molly " Guess not, she's over the road in the Blue Rossi"
If you remember the piece of paper Chip pulled out of the fireplace ? written on it was igh & Ros which Chip thought might be Rose.
Chip Thanks her & heads across the road to the bar.
In order for Chip to get to the Blue Rossi he need 3 pieces of information, having solved the clue in the fireplace it meant he only needed another 2 from the 5 women at the square or from any NCP's that might turn up & yes it is possible that he might not have done so.
Inside its not to busy & as Chip looks around this stunningly attractive woman ( well at least she would be if I was any good at painting ) walks over to him.
Chip"Jessie I take it ?"
Here we have the last test of the piece the seduction test, which again is a brains test against willpower, 
Jessie" Yes, but how did you know ?"
Chip" I've been looking for you & Molly told me you were in here, I'd like to talk to you about the man you were with last night ?
Jessie"I see but not here follow me"
She leads Chip over to a room off the bar &
 been A Femme Fatale Jessie has the upper hand in the test by way of abilities.
`as he steps inside his whole world goes dark.
Cut.

Designer note again, any of you that ever played a THW game will notices a similarity between the above  & their rules & that's because a lot of it was based around their rules but modified to suit what I want, first to go had to be the Rep system as I'm not a fan of it, as it means a character who good at one thing is good at most everything & like wise if their bad.

Now as I mentioned at the start of this post John over on his wonderful blog had just done his first detective game & it was in every sense of the word a detecting game a classic who done it, that is not what I was after here, what I wanted was more your hard boiled pulp P.I in the shape of a Sam Spade or Phil Marlowe & by & large I think I got more or less what I was trying for, not perfect yet but getting there, time to do a full movie to know for sure.

Another thing I want to talk about is sets, now as I'm sure a lot of you might know I'm not your normal gamer as I'm more interested in the story then the game, I'll explain that a bit more as it also help give insight to the use of sets, now most people will set up a gaming table & play out their games on it, if there are say building they may or may not use the inside of the building, but everything will take place on that table.

While yes in the above I had a table set up I also had to the side of it two sets, one for the inside of the house at the start & another for the inside of the Blue Rossi, if I was doing this in full it might well have started inside of Chip's office & might even have involved some one trailing him in a car as he drove out to the house or on his way back depending on the two PP's that was covered in the last movie tone news.

This type of gaming is very similar to RPG gaming & would not be for everyone as most people just want to set up their table & get on with their game, but as you most likely figured out from all the clues by now I'm not everyone :)


That's a wrap for this post as always my thanks for dropping in & if you'd care to leave a comment it would be welcomed.

28 comments:

  1. Great stuff Frank! Love where you're going with this 😀
    So are you rolling for stats, like Chip for instance? Like his Brain stat for instance, are all grade 3 models a 5 then? And conversely are all grade 3 models stats/attributes pre-determined down the line?

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    1. Almost forgot, "The Big Sleep" is my favorite movie of all time, followed closely by "The Maltese Falcon" 😃

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    2. Thanks Ivor, yes I'm rolling against a stat in each case & no all grade 3 characters wouldn't be the same neither would all grade 2 or 1 be the same.

      I use 45 adventure rules for building characters in which each character has 8 stats, Brains & Willpower these will be effected by wounds to the head, Brawn & Guts these will be effected by wounds to the Torso, Heater & Shiv these will be effected by wounds to the arms, Dodge & Speed these will be effected by wounds to the legs, as well as the above each character has a Defensive rating for each body part, which might or might not give a save depending on what hit you.
      You give each stat a rating within certain limitations.

      I won't go into how you build a character here as its a bit long winded, but as well as the stats each character has abilities to flash them out, a grade 3 can have up to 10, a grade 2 up to 7 & a grade 1 up to four, I'll often use abilities from different rules set.

      If you do want to know how to build characters this way send me an email of if others are interested as well I'll do a post on it.

      Yes those two movies are gems as well as Dead Men don't wear Plaid :)

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    3. Thanks for the reply Frank - and it's hilarious that you mentioned Dead Men Don't Wear Plaid, I literally just watched that two days ago through my movie app now that I finally have internet access again 😂

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    4. Your welcome Ivor, I'll have to watch it again as its been a while & then see if I can do a take on with I'll call Dead Men still aren't wearing Plaid lol

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  2. The Maltese Falcon is a classic in every sense! Love those old noir films and Bogey was perfect for that sort of role.

    Nice movie, with director's commentary, too. Cast, scenery, script, and all - great stuff!

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    1. Thanks Fitz, yes a classic movie & one of Bogey's best rolls as Sam Spade imo, Robert Mitchum was aslo excellent when he played Phil Marlowe in Farewell my Lovely & the Big Sleep, although the Big Sleep lost sometime when they movie it to different time as it took away from it, so I think Bogey's Big Sleep was the better movie all round, but both played a great Marlowe.

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    1. Thanks Stephen, I've read your reply to me over on John's blog so thanks for that as well, it was strange when I read your reply to John as it was like I was reading my own thoughts, a Twilight Zone moment if you get my drift.

      Your idea on getting someone to write out clues on cards & then set about finding them is class and really would add a lot to any solo game or for that matter a game been played by a number of people.

      As for finding people who are doing the same thing as yourself been wonderful, in the words of one of my all time favorite stars Stan Laurel " It most certainly is " lol

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    2. hehe, yeah I`m soooo lucky to have a wife as passionate about the hobby as I am, makes sharing a real treat. She is good at coming up with all sorts of fun, treasures and nasties secreted away in book cases, chests, under beds, what have you, and writes the most devilish riddles and clues for me to locate and pick up - wonderful for my solo endeavours (she`s a pretty darn hot DM/GM too hehe).

      Would you believe, I find a lot of my plots from those old classics when I host my group games (especially the one where the pair are trying to get that piano up those endless steps... only in my version, I had the player party charged with the job of getting an important statue in place at the top of a temple entrance, which had to be completed before the Grand Master arrived on his annual tour of the city. Much fun and shenanigans was had by one and all I can tell you LOL.

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    3. You are indeed lucky my wife has no interest in the hobby, she's not even one for playing games, but your comments are giving me food for thought Stephen.

      I would indeed believe it as an imaginative mind can find inspiration in many places & yours seems very imaginative, I can picture the mayhem that getting the stature in place must have been. :)

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    4. You`ve made me want to get out all my Laurel and Hardy DVD`s out again and watch them all :-))

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  4. Another good story.game and I like the way you're thinking. It's alwas going to be a very hard task incorporating any sort of surprise in solo play with this style of adventure.
    After reading Vagabond's account it did get me thinking about some ways to simulate an investigation too. Since my initial thoughts I considered the "adventure style" books that were all the rage many years ago. Eg. "You see two doors a red one anda blue one" ; if you decide to take the red one go to page xxx, if you take the blue one go to yyy.
    This format, with enough pkanning and choices may have some mileage too.

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    1. Thanks Joe, I totally agree but not known who might attack you or when or where does add a bit to things.

      I think what Vagabond is after is a lot harder to pull off then what I'm trying to do, but for his first outing he made a good job of it, I know the kind of books your talking about & believe you could do it with a deck of cards, Eg I solve a clue & draw a card, the king of spade's means I now head to the docks were as the queen might mean I head up town.

      These are still early in trying to gaming in this way for me & people's comments here & on other blogs are helping me pull the different things together :)

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  5. This is just insanely good! What a brilliant thing on so many levels.

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  6. Nicely written Frank enjoyed it immensely!

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  7. Sorry it's taken a while for me to respond to your post Frank, I've read it 3 times now and been thinking about what you have done and are trying to do and how that relates to my thoughts and ideas.
    I think what I'm after is a discrete game i.e. a puzzle or crime that is solvable on the table in one night but that can be any genre and not just a detective story. Still need to think more about it though.

    Ok thats out of the way back to your game. This is classic Frank O'Donnell style just brilliant. The sets are excellent and used to great effect, the opening scene set on a stage set is inspired and your usual tight photos just emphasize the storyline.
    I've been playing around with stop motion videos lately, in a very childish way but I've done some background reading into film making and the initial storyboards that the filming is based on. Your post here is very like the storyboards used in a film. It's also very similar to a graphic novel and I wonder if you experimented with speech bubbles in the pictures that might be an interesting concept from a visual point. It would seperate the verbal part of the story from the descriptive part of the story.
    Your thoughts on a rule system are just right for what you're doing, that is they drive your story forward in a predictable but unpredictable direction, if that makes sense.
    I was very impressed with .45 Adventure rules and used a lot of their attributes in my own figure creation but I geared it towards 2HW rules for the gaming bit. The .45 are for a couple of figures and a very detailed set of rules, I prefer to be a bit more free form and simplistic but I think what you have taken from them is going to work well.
    I'm curious about your ending, was this thrown up by your original

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    1. Storyline because you knew the original clue led to the Rossi or was it something game generated. Whichever it's a classic ending to a serial which I hope this will become.

      Sorry about the break in transmission I wrote more than blogger allows. Doh.
      Bope you keep the momentum up with tgis one. Big grin.
      Cheers

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    2. Oh last thing thanks for the comments about my blog that was very nice of you and I didn't realise we were rival studios, I always thought more like kindred enterprises, doing something similar but different.

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    3. Thanks John, I'll go with your last comment first mate, on the comments about your blog your more then welcome as its excellent, on us been rivals, that's only from a fictional point of view & don't forget it was Mr Panama that said it not me :)

      Now on to other matters, I thing we might becoming at the same thing from different angles near enough, the puzzle game you did was your idea & one I really liked, but your idea so for you to run with mate & yes I do know that you wouldn't mind me doing the same (for which I thank you) but that's not me.

      Right that's enough about you ;) what have I've been doing in this post the one before it & maybe the next one ? sometimes the mind is like a lock with lots of leavers & sometimes you can be doing things without even realizing it & its only when you use the right key do all of those leavers fall into place.

      To explain that we're going to go back in time to If it wasn't for One's & a post I did which introduced Chip & Tasha & is the only post I brought over from that blog to this one apart from the story I was in the middle of doing at the time.

      Murder By Death the remake, Chips character was based on Sam Diamond played by Peter Falk ( aka Columbo ) who is playing a spoof on the hard boiled detective,Tasha was just to use a model I have of A Russian woman smoking a cigar, well it was a comedy after all lol

      So apart from Chip & Tasha what has that got to do with this ?
      Answer everything now I look back, in that game I had 4 detectives along with their sidekicks to go around asking questions to try to solve something, if they passed a test they got a card/clue

      What did I do in the above post ? have Chip go around asking questions to solve something, if he passed the test he got information a clue.
      If you remember I posted in a comment on your blog about the use of cards to solve a crime.

      Putting it altogether, hard boiled PI check, question test check, the use of cards as clues check, its been sitting staring me in the face for so long that I'm almost embarrassed, almost :)

      To finish up the last couple of things mate, as you know in a movie I'll most times just give the story & not rules, but this was what I call a rehearsal, the story was just to give me a feel for things & have a bit of fun with, so it won't be continued, but there will be stories like it.

      The whole Ros = Rose Blue Rossi thing started out as Rose, but when I'd the board set up & really looked at it I changed it, as what was to stop the first woman been Rose ? & if she was what then ? then I though of something you once brought up, what happens if I miss the clue ? & so it became Ros= Blue Rossi. I think that covers it all John but one last thing, by doing it like this first it means I don't do what yourself & myself have done many a time, come up with something that you like & then when you go to use it again forget how you done it :)

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  8. I think what you're doing is going to work well, there's a sound logic and elegance to it. I suspect what I'm after is not going to work as well, but it's early days yet.
    You sound quite enthused by this story, and I hope to read more soon.
    Good luck with it and don't forget to keep notes.

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    1. It'll only work because I can make it work as the game is of lesser importance to me then to yourself, which makes what your trying to do much harder imo

      I do these posts so I won't have to keep notes, plus I get input from all you wonderful folk :)

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  9. Great post Frank, your detecting rules seem to have worked well for what you wanted.
    The sets and models looked great and really help set the scenes, shall follow with interest how yours and John's ideas develop

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    1. Thanks Dave, yes its coming together well but like most things there is room for improvement :)

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  10. If you're American, soccer probably isn't your cuppa tea.
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    First of all, at all times I used the soccer teams themselves as a starting point.
    แทงบอลไลฟ์สด

    ReplyDelete

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